Oakland

Black Joy On The Block

by Robin Lapid | Feb 23, 2024 1:05 pm

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Posted to: Festival

Fourth Annual ​“Love the People” Block Party
Black Panther Mini Museum
Oakland
Feb. 18, 2024

I’m always on the lookout for pockets of joy, specifically in the form of community pride, and particularly where people might not expect them. When I stumbled on the Black Panther Mini Museum in West Oakland, a block from the BART station, it was a beautiful brew of everything I hoped to find on this side of town. Housed in a big blue Victorian decorated with murals by the West Oakland Mural Projects, ​“Women of the Black Panther Party,” the museum opened on Juneteenth weekend in 2021. Not a great time for an opening, as it was still in the waning days of a global pandemic. But they didn’t seem deterred. Even the flier for their fourth annual block party promised — alongside free groceries, a jumpy house, face painting, and bubbles — ​“black joy!” Under dark skies and good vibes, they low-key delivered.

With the weather getting gloomier, I was afraid it might have been canceled. But as I neared the block, I was reassured the party was still on. A DJ played ​‘70s soul disco hits by Midnight Star and Michael Jackson as a happy couple danced, tables of free food and groceries were being handed out (everything from Ritual coffee beans to lasagna and jollof rice), and a clutch of kids played in and around the promised jumpy house.

“Welcome to our block party in the beautiful Bottoms! Enjoy yourself. And it’s not going to rain!” the emcee announced confidently. (She was mostly right. It wouldn’t rain until after the party ended.) She encouraged guests to stock up on free groceries and hygiene products, and to bring them to their neighbors in need.

I got an ice cream cone from a volunteer, who said she had since moved to Berkeley but was happy to come help out. I got my hands dirty screen-printing a Black Panther Party poster with the help of another volunteer (although the rain that poured down later sadly ruined it). Her hands were covered in ink.

“It’s a little messy,” she acknowledged of the DIY process. ​“But I like it, because it’s not perfect.” 

“These are fourth-generation Black legacy homes,” the emcee noted. ​“A lot of my neighbors were born and raised in this neighborhood. It’s a beautiful community.“ The homes in this neighborhood, rows and rows of beautiful, stately Victorians with more land to spread out in than the ones you find in more well-known San Francisco neighborhoods, look lived-in, sometimes a little run-down, but the beauty still prevailing. Having walked here from the Lunar New Year parade in Chinatown and Little Saigon, I felt like I traversed decades of history and humanity, and peeked into the soul of the neighborhood.

Walking through West Oakland embodies the area’s reckoning with its complicated history. The apartment buildings, homes, and sparse businesses that line 7th Street alongside the BART station are just a block away from the storied Victorians and the Black Panther Mini Museum. The neighborhood started as the end-point to the international railroad in the 19th century, developing into a culturally rich working and middle-class hub for the Black community that lived and worked there in the period surrounding World War II (including Maya Angelou), then falling prey to discriminatory housing and zoning laws. 

The block party showed evidence of the resilient diversity that you root for to overcome the neighborhood’s challenges. I saw many ethnicities, overheard kids speaking Spanish, saw another volunteer hand out groceries to an elderly Asian woman, and just basked in the neighborhood vibes, which proved good and true. Everyone was welcome.

Above the DJ’s table loomed the three-story tall mural with a quote by Sandra Bland, who died at the hands of police in custody in 2015. ​“My beautiful kings and queens, someone cares about you, somebody loves you, and knows you can do great things.”

Tags: party , community , nonprofits , culture , music